


Home

by pprfaith



Series: Wishlist 2016 [18]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Child Neglect, Darcy Being Awesome, Dimensional Travel, Dragons, Gen, If I missed anything, Magic, Magical Realism, Not Beta Read, OC Character Death, Prompt Fic, Tell Me, Wishlist_Fic, Women Being Awesome, child heroes, deaging, technically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 10:16:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8975506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pprfaith/pseuds/pprfaith
Summary: In which Darcy battles hope and normalcy just to get home. (Wishlist, Day 18)





	

**Author's Note:**

> For meinongian/vague_positivity, who prompted me with a link to post. The bare bones: imagine a child character pulled into another world, to save that world, Narnia style, only to then be sent 'home', also Narnia style. Only instead of accepting their fate, or being happy to be home, they spend their life trying to find a way back, because that other world, that was home. With Darcy being cast as the main character. (I can't find the link, whoops.)
> 
> Usually, I hate long A/Ns, but I feel I need to explain this story a little. The prompt is amazing. The concept is brilliant and it deserved pages upon pages of world building, OCs, plot, details, emotional upheaval and payoff. I couldn't deliver that, so I stuck with a glimpse into that world, with a tone and style I hope does Darcy's state justice. I am so sorry I couldn't do more than that.

+

When Darcy is ten, she falls down a hole in the pavement on her way home from school and lands in a magical kingdom. 

No lie. 

She has the bruises to show for it and everything. 

She lands in a magical kingdom next to a boy called Dennis and there is light all around them and the rush of water and the murmur of prayer and the monks that pick them up and dust them off tell them of a prophecy.

A prophecy of two children, one of fire and one of water, who will come and bring their world into a new age, an age of enlightenment. Of peace. 

Children who will ride the gold dragon and the silver one and change everything.

They tell them that, the very first night, and Dennis hangs on their every word, mouthing ‘fire’ over and over. Fire, fire, fire. 

Darcy looks at him, at the monks, at the giant statues cradling the monastery, one with scales the color of her grandma’s good silver, the other with wings the same shade as the sun. She looks at it all and the only thing she can think is, yes. 

Yes.

+

She misses her mother, of course she does. But it’s an old feeling, one she’s long since grown used to. Between two jobs and a rotating roster of boyfriends, the Lewis women only ever passed the torch at the front door, coming or going. 

It’s an old ache, the missing, but this time there is an entire world to explore, magic at the tip of her fingers and a hundred monks to spend time with her, to show interest in her. It’s a far cry from a fifth story walk-up apartment with leaky pipes and two rickety kitchen chairs, one of which was always empty. 

She doesn’t cry, not the first night and not any other and she’d feel guilty about it, but Dennis’ eyes stay just as dry as hers, his jaw set against questions about his parents and his lips tight. 

+

The first time she twirls her wrist and the water from the shallow pool at the center of the courtyard spins and dances into her palm, Darcy almost cries with joy.

Beside her, Dennis sits, surrounded by candles, making them flicker, on and off, on and off, endlessly.

“Look,” she cheers. “Look, isn’t it gorgeous?!”

He waves, a broad grin on his face. “Well done!” he cries and offers his hand for her to squeeze even though his eyes never leave the fire. 

The candles keep flicking, on and off, on and off. 

+

It takes years for them to figure out their magic, to learn how to use it, to really, truly _use it_. 

By the time Darcy is sixteen, she can make entire oceans rise into the sky and Dennis breathes great storms of fire across the golden desert. 

People in the streets dance in the rain Darcy makes, celebrate along the beaches as she makes the water dance, laugh as she spins it into dragons and stars and birds. 

Dennis is close by, always, watching her, watching what she creates. Sometimes, he joins in the games, making figures of his own, phoenixes and flowers that bloom like explosions.

But the fire storms he conjures scare the people and the illusions he paints into the sky rain embers and ashes in the streets and where they applaud her, they fear him. 

+

They fear him and fear him and fear him and he understands why, he does, Darcy knows he does, but understanding doesn’t fix anything and there was always something hot in his eyes, even before fire settled there.

They both fell into holes in the ground and landed in a world of magic and it was amazing, so amazing, so beautiful and brilliant and it became home. 

A home that was more than an empty apartment for Darcy, more than the screaming father Dennis hid from under his bed, even though the old man always found him. 

More than they’d ever had before. 

Eventually, Dennis can’t stand this new home not loving him back, anymore.

+

Before an age of peace, there must always be war and before enlightenment there must be prejudice and ignorance. 

And before Darcy can douse the world in healing water, there must be storms of fire to raze it to the ground. 

+

They meet above the sea, her on the back of the great water dragon, its coils tall enough to raise her into the clouds, him between the wings of the great fire dragon, raining down doom, doom, doom. 

He never meant to become the villain of the prophecy, but he’s fire and fire is terrifying.

And Darcy, Darcy never meant to become the hero fighting him, but she’s water and water is kind. 

He burns the world to the ground, in the end, buries the land under ashes, and she waters it, nurtures it back to life. 

She couldn’t do it without the ashes he left, but he’s a villain now, so no-one says that out loud. He saves the world he doomed and while she helps rebuild cities and farmlands, he sits in a dark cell with only his candles for company, on and off, on and off. 

The dragons go back to their homes, below the sea, above the clouds and what’s left is a Lord of Fire and a Lady of Water, warriors, both, a villain and a hero.

But new ages don’t need heroes, and they certainly don’t need villains.

“It’s time,” the monks say, over the sound of Darcy’s crying, over the rattle of Dennis’ chains. “It’s time for you to return home. You have brought us peace, now you, too, shall have yours.”

“We are home!” Dennis roars. But no-one listens when the villain speaks and Darcy can’t talk around the shape of her sobs. 

+

“Why can’t I stay?” she asks on the last night, in the courtyard where she once landed, ten years old and lonely and amazed.

The old monk who greeted her then runs a gentle hand over her curls. “That is not what is written, child,” he says. 

It’s funny, how the same prophecy that once gave her a home is now taking it away.

+

The sidewalk is still there, and her backpack, and _her_ , in the same clothes, the same shoes, the same body as the moment she left. She curls up right there, right where a hole in the ground used to be and sobs until a kind passer-by kneels down next to her and calms her down. 

+

She forgot what being ten is like. Forgot her reach and her balance, forgot how ten-year-olds speak, how they move, what they like. 

She looks at her mother blankly too often, alienates the children she once called friends, freaks out her teachers and doesn’t know how to deal with any of it.

She spends days, weeks, months over the sink with her hands out, palms up, trying to make just a single drop of water dance. 

Nothing.

Go home, they said, but this isn’t home. 

+

She gets a grip, eventually. Her body grows back into what it once was and she stops running into things all the time. Her age starts to match up to her speech patterns, to her knowledge, to the way she looks at the world. 

Her teachers start praising her instead of flinching away from her too old eyes. 

One day, she’s older than she has ever been before and it’s not okay, it’s not, but it’s what she has. 

Six months later, her mother dies. 

+

Dennis’ last name is MacKenna and he was born in 1938. He came from his time the same way she came from hers, pulled through time and space, and she spends years looking for him.

When she finds the Lord of Fire, he is an old man in a hospital bed in Reno, his palms covered in old burns and his eyes dead. 

“Darcy,” he whispers, hoarsely. 

“Dennis,” she says and smiles, because she never hated him, not once. 

He smiles back before breaking into a rattling, wheezing cough. Once he’s done, sinking back into his pillows, he whispers, “You look so young. And so old.”

“I missed you, Den.”

“And I you.” He reaches for her and she wraps her hands around his liver-spotted ones, squeezing like she did the first time she made water dance and he made candles flicker. There is one standing on his bedside table, burning steadily.

“Did you ever-“

He snorts weakly. “If I did, I wouldn’t be here, would I?”

No. No, he wouldn’t. 

“Did you ever stop looking for a way back?”

He just looks at her with watery, half-blind eyes and she smiles, crookedly, because, yeah. Stupid question. 

+

1948 to present. Decades worth of looking for a way home, a way out of this world without magic, without dragons, and he still dies in a hospital bed in Reno, with no-one but Darcy there to see him go. 

+

She finishes high school, starts college, drops out, tours through Europe and finds no magic there, either. 

Goes back to college, switches majors twice, does drugs and booze and sex and finds no magic there, either. 

Goes to the backend of New Mexico for six science credits and finds a god that fell from the sky. 

And Darcy breathes.

+

“Jane said,” Darcy tries, between the hospital and the boss fight that levels a town, “Jane said that you told her… about… other worlds.”

Thor looks up from where he’s doing something very strange with a sponge and the frying pan from breakfast. After studying her for a beat, he nods. “Aye. The nine realms of Yggdrasil.”

“Nine? Seriously. Like, the entire cosmos only has nine planets with life on it?” Heart in her chest, beating water, fire, dragons, water, fire, dragons, if there are only _nine_ then hers must be - 

He shakes his head at her, a lopsided grin on his face and god (ha), the man is beautiful. “Not so, fair Darcy. Hundreds upon thousands, I imagine, among the stars. But there are only nine that my people have traveled to. If you wish to know about the others, mayhap only my brother may tell you of their wonders, for he has traveled far, far beyond the branches of the world tree.”

“Your brother? Loki, right?” She swallows the first, instinctive ‘please tell me where to find him’, bites it back ruthlessly. It’s never that easy. It tastes like blood on her tongue and the jello Dennis never ate. It tastes like old hope and Darcy hates herself, a little, for still falling for it. “Do you think he’ll…visit?”

Do you think, she doesn’t say, that he’ll have been to a world where dragons dance in the sky and swim in the sea, where magic is real and fire can dance, where water can touch the sky and the clouds can burn. Do you think, she swallows, that he can take me home?

She never gets to try and say any of that, even in edited form, because Thor’s brother is a dick and once again, she’s stuck and alone and every time she turns on the tab, the water does nothing but fall. Fuck gravity. 

+

There are aliens falling from the sky and then there is a city rising into orbit, SHIELD going up in flames and the Accords and everything goes to hell in a handbasket and Darcy watches from the sidelines, her hand clutched in Jane’s, and thinks how much better she could have done if it were her. 

How she would have swept the army out of the sky and poured the city back into its place, how she would have drowned Hydra and made Ross and his ilk quiver before her. 

But here, here, now, she’s not the Lady of Water, she’s not the Dragon’s Chosen, the Queen of the Seas. 

Here, she’s Darcy Lewis, Jane’s slightly cracked intern.

Here, she’s nobody. 

+

“Have you ever been to a world of water and fire?” she asks Loki, a hand on his arm, stopping him from joining his brother and the rest of the Avengers on the carrier meant to take them up to orbit. Up to Thanos’ ship and absolute destruction. 

The trickster god stops, helmet in one hand and weapon in the other and she can see the moment he _looks at her_. The moment he realizes that yes, this is not the time, and yes, Thanos is coming, but she still needs to know and this might be her last chance. 

“Dragons in the sky and, like, prophecies and an ocean that spans almost the entire planet. Have you?”

He hesitates. A tinny voice chimes from his earpiece. 

A call to arms. 

He looks toward the elevator, then back at her. 

“Once,” he says, hurriedly. “Just once.”

“How do I get there?”

“Why?”

“Because it’s home,” she snaps, too true, but there’s no time. He’s been here for weeks, but she was on the other side of the planet with Jane, Jane, Jane, Jane whom Darcy loves like she once loved Dennis. Jane, whom she couldn’t leave.

And now there’s no time. 

“There are doorways,” he tells her and then the entire tower shakes and he makes an aborted move toward his earpiece before pressing his lips into a thin line and ripping his arm free. 

He goes to save the world. 

Darcy goes to make coffee and wait. It’s all she’s good for these days. She drinks four cups of it and every single one tastes more bitter than the last as the sky above the tower catches fire and _burns_.

+

Thor comes back. Loki doesn’t.

“I’m so sorry,” Jane whispers, but the god just shakes his head. 

“My brother is not so easy to kill,” he decides, but there are weeks and months and no god of tricks on their doorsteps and Darcy can’t help but hate him a little for it. It’s her own damn fault for asking him, for making him give her yet another false hope, but, but, but. 

+

It’s Dr. Strange, in the end, who knows the way home. 

She’s thirty-two and carries nothing with her except a stack of photos Jane painstakingly printed out, downsized to pocket format.

She’s thirty-two and she’s been away for longer than she was ever there.

She’s thirty-two and time is a strange thing and the good Doctor says it’s been centuries, there, since the war.

She’s thirty-two and she doesn’t give a damn because finally, finally, Darcy Lewis is going home.

She thinks Dennis would have been proud. 

+

**Author's Note:**

> Come tumble with me [here](http://www.wordsformurder.tumblr.com/).


End file.
